back to the pacificboychoir.org home page

July 26, 2007— to Milano

With all our concerts done, we headed to Milano, where our flight leaves tomorrow. Our first stop was the 14th century Palazzo Ducale. After, we got a tour of the city center, the Duomo and the Galleria, and passed be La Scala as well.

Luigi got us permission (of course) to sing a song in the Duomo, so we sang Bogoroditse from the south transept. I thought I took some photos in the Duomo but I guess not. We did Head Boy voting in the old town square, but we will need a runoff.

There is a strange feel today. We know we are not back home. We have no more concerts, and we know today we must say goodbye to some valuable singers and great friends. We tour around but people keep looking at Adam. Alex and David go back almost to the beginning of the choir. We will see Alex and David next week at camp. Terrence left his school to be at the choir school for even just one year, becoming the second graduate, and becoming an amazing singer. Terrence doesn't live too far. Adam we don't know when we'll see again, since he is heading home having graduated from the choir school. There are lots of fine Troubadors moving on. Though we lost more guys from TR last year, I can't help but feel like this year the spirit of a generation of Troubadors is moving on. The Britten CD generation is gone, and the choir school generation is truly upon us. Our Continuum and Changed Voice groups continue to grow and strengthen. Troubadors will be good, but it will take some work to be sure.

At our farewell dinner, all departing singers stood up to say something or tell a story. We thanked Luigi and Flavio (who unfortunately had to stay with the bus) and Avid and the staff. The food was excellent, and it was a fitting end to the tour.

We said goodbye to Jeremy, who was leaving from Milano to go to Germany with his family. We drove to the hotel, far out of town but near the airport. Adam's family was already there. In a bug-filled lobby of an otherwise non-descript hotel in the suburbs of Milan, we said a teary farewell to Adam, the Polish boy alto wonder who almost inexplicably left his family in another country to sing with the PBA, having lived at the Wilsons' house for three years. He transformed the Pacific Boychoir's sound, set a standard for hard work in rehearsal, learned English from scratch, and endeared himself to everyone, earning a spot as one of our Lead Boys.

When most boys had finished crying, Adam returned 15 minutes later for his passport, which we had all forgotten about. I told him to leave quickly before we all started crying again. We had a lot to do to make all the choir equipment airplane-worthy and we had a 4:00 a.m. wakeup all. The staff stayed up to count ballots. Congratulations to Devin Anglin, next year's Head Boy, and to Malcolm Lane and Zander McLaughlin who will be Lead Boys. We focus on our last task: getting home safely.